Spare Us the Gore-y Details

Al Gore denies guilt, perhaps giving him a little more sense of what it feels like to be a denier, given the denier movement within the global warming debate. And perhaps his accuser is a climate skeptic who felt that massaging Al and his ego was more than she could take.

But I do feel for the accused here. Forget the quaint, precious notion of "innocent till proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." In everyday practice our society uses a "Where there's a trace of smoke, there's global warming" method to judge and hang people. In most cases, we protect the names of the accuser but never the accused. (In the Gore situation, the accuser did choose to come forward publicly.)

Be certain, the guilty must be punished, as Al Gore must be punished if it can be ascertained that there is truly a case here.

But what about if he is being accused without proper cause? Is it time that we take greater care to keep both accuser and accused's names out of the spotlight, until such time that we can ascertain whether someone is indeed innocent till proven guilty? Didn't the McMartin case teach us anything?

There is too much risk that even an exemplary public figure or community leader can be destroyed forever by even an insinuation of a crime -- but never more so than in our Internet & 24/7 cable era. We need to adjust accordingly.